The Purveyor of Religious Goods, or The Community Church

A bottom line survival goal of any church plant is to acquire enough church members in order to make the body of believers an autonomous, self-sustaining ministry. Therefore, churches are compelled to reach people who will find alignment with the church's vision and passion.

I think that often times, right at this point, a lot of churches sellout their intrinsic identity. By this I mean that it is possible for churches, in their attempts to attract members in order to survive, to get sidetracked, presenting itself to be something in the community or city that it's really not supposed to be.

Case in point: when we first arrived in our neighborhood, I kept hearing from other church planters how important it was to "meet the felt needs of the community." So, I took this axiom to mean "we need to do something cool and for FREE that people in our community's demographic will get a kick out of!" I came up with the idea of hosting some kind of community carnival down at the local community park. You know the deal: jump houses, face painting, cotton candy, games, music, food--all for free! "Yeah man," I thought to my self and tried to convince our existing core group, "this will rock. People will come out and think we're really cool, then they'll come to our church, get saved, and become financially supportive of our ministry!"

Ha, that last part is totally tongue-in-cheek, but that was the basic gist of my thinking in the most realest of terms. But then, as time progressed, I began to consider something: people who come to a church come (and should come) to meet with God. They're coming for a spiritual experience; something that will clue them in on some answers that they're seeking in life. They're not (in our situation) coming because it's fun and entertaining and because we let kids play in a jump house for free. I realized that the mission of our church was not to be a community purveyor of entertainment: the world has that niche sewn up pretty well, I'd say. Rather, the mission of our church is to be a purveyor of "religious" goods to our community. In other words: it makes much more sense to me that the church should offer this community that which other institutions "of" the world cannot. A place of prayer, a place of contemplation, a place of instruction from the Scriptures, a place of spiritual fellowship, a place of spiritual experience and encouragement--things that the community people aren't going to find at the local shopping plaza, Chuck E. Cheese, or club.

I mean, spiritual things are what people who come to church are expecting to find . . . aren't they?